My Thickening Haircare Routine

How Kerastase, Aveda and Gold Collagen kick started my hair growth

This year, I made a number of changes in my life. I quit my job, set up a business, moved to a new city, navigated highs and lows of my personal life. I feel like I really held it together, but my hair certainly didn't.

During these changes, my hair got significantly thinner. A simple shower and hair wash was making my drain clogged, and I was spending day after day fishing hair from my drain. Disgusting but true. Stress makes my hair fall out, and my first reaction was to chop it to add some lustre. The long hair I had spent two years growing now needed to go and I needed to thicken out what was left.

Over the course of around four to five months, I’ve used a number of different products, each of which has worked in their own way. I thought I’d share because when I’ve mentioned the odd thing on Instagram about my hair, lots of people have reached out to tell me they’ve gone through something similar.

My first step on noticing this hair loss was to turn to Kerastase to add some strength to the hair that was left.

Mark, my favourite hairdresser in Birmingham (based at Umberto Giannini in the JQ) told me about their new Resistance range in the summer. He loves Kerastase, and said he had barely mixed and matched any of the other ranges since discovering this because he felt this one did everything. Strength, hydration, growth, the lot. I used Bain Extentioniste Shampoo (for strong, long hair) and Fondant Extentioniste (a restoring, detangling conditioner) each day. This was definitely the start of my hair feeling stronger, and once I had used these up, I moved onto more of a hair stimulating regime.

I met a lovely girl from Gold Collagen a few months ago and mentioned my hair concerns, and she gave me a 30 day supply of their Hairlift supplement to try. Having just searched their website to find the price and information for you here, I pretty much spat out my tea at how much this actually costs. Ok, I am with you, this is a huge amount of money to spend on a liquid supplement. But truthfully, having tested this not knowing the price, I can attest that it really did.

Gold Collagen is a liquid collagen supplement that you swallow from a little bottle each day. Each bottle is about the same size as a Yakult if I had to give it a liquid counterpart. This is a cocktail of collagen, peptides and keratin to name but a few things, and helps your body to absorb these benefits from the inside out. (You can read a bit more about the science behind this on their website here.)

There are many different liquid supplements on their website, but taking Hairlift definitely increased the density of my hair. Full disclosure, I was using this alongside a hair stimulating washing routine, so how I know it was working was that I saw a marked difference in the strength of my nails too.

I know this is a huge investment. I’ve just spotted they have a banner on their home page about Black Friday later this week, so that may be one to keep an eye out for too.

This range from Aveda is what I’m currently using, designed to target and stimulate thinning hair. It definitely works, but using it isn’t the most pleasant of hair washing experiences. Look past that and you’ll find your hair tumbling down your back again in no time.

Invati Advanced Exfoliating Shampoo

First you have the shampoo, which is kind of like a jelly in texture and doesn’t lather up. Yes it cleans your hair, but not in a traditional way that leaves it feeling clean and smelling gorgeous. This is an exfoliating shampoo that helps to remove build-up on the scalp that can clog pores and thus affect new growth. You really need to rinse this thoroughly, so when you think your hair is clean, blast it again for 10 more seconds.

Invati Advanced

Next you have the conditioner. This is really rich in texture, quite balmy when you massage it in, and again you need to take care to really thoroughly rinse this. Both of these have a slightly medicinal, herby scent.

Invati Advanced Scalp Revitaliser

Finally (and, in my opinion, the crucial step) there’s a little squirt-on hair treatment that you apply all over the scalp daily. Taking the time to inject this onto the scalp and massage in is the extra step that really stimulates the hair growth. All of the ingredients in this (turmeric, tangerine peel, knotweed to name a few) invigorate the scalp and thus kick start new growth.

Does this smell delicious and help you to achieve a gorgeous bouncy blow dry? No. But my gosh, it has markedly increased the density of my hair and overall thickness. I can’t rate it enough.

On those days when I just want a lovely shampoo and condition, I’ve been using the Aveda Cherry Almond range. This smells delicious, like the Double Dip sweets you used to have when you were little. It leaves your hair feeling much softer (the almond oil works instantly) and it smells lovely for days. I swapped this into my routine when I just wanted to feel lovely and girlie, and kept up with my daily scalp treatment even if I wasn’t loyal to the shampoo and conditioner.

Where I’m at now…

If you look closely at these photos, you’ll see a little fuzzy halo of hair around my hairline. That’s all of the new growth bursting through, so in months to come when this thickens out I’ll have much denser head of hair. (How gorgeous is this colour by the way? Maxine at Hershesons in London is the QUEEN of blonde!)

Lots and lots of people have messaged me to say that they’ve used the Philip Kingsley Tricho range and seen great results, I thought that would be worth mentioning too. It was quite a unanimous flood of messages I had on Instagram one day when I briefly mentioned my hair concerns.

This is what worked for me, I hope you find something great for you. Have you experienced something similar and found a great remedy? Send me a message on Instagram @MixedGemsBeauty and tell me, I’d love to hear your suggestions.